trace

TRACE

Inkjet print, model figures, plexiglass, 16" x 24" 2016

The trace project examines one of the most personal and immediate forms human geological impact - the footprint. The small scale geomorphologies of transient human footmarks are charged with irony - both insignificant within the vast timescales and physical magnitude of the earth's geohistory, and symbolic of the immense power of the human technosphere to rapidly reshape the geological landscape on unprecedented scales in the contemporary Anthropocene era.

SELECTED VIGNETTES: SHOEPRINT TRAIL GEOMORPHOLOGIES

A popular destination for tourists visiting Cassis and Parc National de Calanques in the south of France, the beach of Port Pin hosts a ever-changing array of near-surface landforms caused by anthrogenic footmarks. Changing levels of moisture in the sand give the impressions a distinctive fragmented appearance.

A series of footmarks discovered in 2016 at a site in Laetoli, Tanzania are currently the earliest human fossil footprints known. 3.6 million years old, they have been linked to the human ancestral hominid Australopithecus afrensis.